Deadgirl

think of the man-in-white again. That ugly Lincoln of his was probably still prowling the streets, looking for me. I slid even further toward the floor.

Apparently Dad noticed.

“Too embarrassed to be seen with Daddy?”

I glared up at him from underneath the brim of my baseball cap. He flashed a roguish grin, turned the car around, and pulled out of our street. Stupid fathers. One minute you wanted to strangle them for being a suffocating jerk, and the next minute you wanted to strangle them for being an insufferable… boy.

I breathed a little easier when we pulled into the brightly lit parking lot of the Ralphs. We crossed the parking lot, and I tried my best not to look over my shoulder every three to five seconds.

We made it to the Chinese food place unmolested, and I was surprised when, after my dad ordered my usual, and he ordered his food and told the lady at the counter that it was, “For here, thanks.” He handed me my little plate of food on a bright red plastic tray, took one just like it, and lead me to one of the booths up against the wall.

I glanced around now—I hadn’t really processed the place when we’d walked in. To be honest, I had kinda zombied-out. Now that we were staying, I took a second to look. Only two other people—an older couple, around forty, sitting in one of the tables close to the window.

I set my tray down and slid into the booth. Dad slid across from me.

“For here?”

Dad shrugged. “I guess I fear the wrath of Mom. You know how she is about my salt intake.”

I rolled my eyes. “Mom left us to fend for ourselves. We can eat what we want.”

“Hear hear,” he said, clinked his plastic cup of Pepsi against mine, and took a swig. I joined him.

We ate in silence for a while, trying to avoid any dangerous small talk. Dad had to go on and ruin it anyway.

“Since when do you bike-ride, Luce Armstrong?”

I shrugged. “Just…I just wanted to get out. Get breathing. Get thinking, I guess, too.”

“Mmm-hmm,” Dad said, unhelpfully. The look on his face made promises of probing questions to come.

“Mom already gave me the anorexia talk,” I said, and poked a finger into my stomach. I wasn’t anything like fat, but I wasn’t anything like skinny either. “Trust me, I’m okay.”

Dad laughed. I made a face—his laughter made me suspicious of its source.

“What?”

“Please,” Dad said. “My daughter loves food way too much to be anorexic.”

“Hey!”

He waved a pacifying hand, “Relax. I’m not calling you anything, I’m just saying. Check out your plate. Check out mine.”

I glanced down. My plate was practically clean, and his was still half-piled with food. I blushed and made the keep going spinning finger gesture. He flashed me a sympathetic smile and went on.

“I just…I know you don’t want to talk about it, Lucy, but maybe…maybe you should.”

“Dad—”

“Not me,” Dad said, and held his hands out. “But maybe…somebody.”

“Like Mom?”

“Do you want to talk to Mom about it?”

I shook my head vigorously. I really frapped my brain a little.

“I didn’t think so,” Dad said. “But if you want, we can arrange something with a shrink.”

“Dad!”

Dad held his hands up and nodded slowly.

“Just if you change your mind—”

“D-A-D.”

“Okay, okay.”

I held onto my withering stare for as long as I could, but he returned nothing that even approached anger or offense. After a long moment I reached over and began forking chunks of his orange chicken onto my plate.

“Hey.”

I pointed my fork at him and growled. Thankfully, he didn’t laugh too hard.

We finished our food in very relieved silence and headed for the door.

The couple sitting near the door were engaged in a near-silent fight. They were casting stony looks at each other and whispering in short, harsh bursts. When we passed them, the lady looked up at me and gave me the everything is totally fine here look, which is only necessary when everything isn’t. I grabbed the handle and yanked the door open.

“Luce—” Dad said, panic in his voice.

I glanced back at him, “What’s—”

Something grabbed my shoulder from the front and vised the opposite arm. I yelped and spun around, my entire body spiking with fear and adrenaline. I gargled something unintelligible at the long, thin face in front of me. It was a mixture of surprise, fear, and recognition. Luckily my dad only caught on to the first two. He grabbed my assailant by his wrists, pried his hands off of me, and shoved him back. My dad outweighed the guy by at least fifty pounds, and most of it looked to be solid muscle.

The man staggered, and when I caught a better glimpse of him, I yelped again.

Tall and thin, wearing an old brown suit with a bright red scarf dangling around his neck. He hadn’t fallen, merely stumbled after my dad’s shove, but when he turned his face up I knew. Long, thin, full of wrinkles but with eyes like two little jewels. They seemed to catch and hold the light rather than bouncing it away. His shaggy gray hair stuck up at angles.

Puck.

“Get out of here,” Dad said, stepping between me and Puck. When I was behind Dad, I mouthed, “I’m sorry” to Puck. He caught the expression, but pretended like he wasn’t looking at me. Probably didn’t want to set my dad off too much.

Puck held up his hands—the I’m sorry gesture. He took another step back, his face in a hang-dog expression.

“Get the fuck back,” my dad said, louder. “Go!”

Puck recoiled and nodded furiously. A blanket of shame smothered me. Puck had saved my life and made me feel like I wasn’t completely out of mind. Seeing him here, now, made everything seem all the more real, and yet at the same time more dreamlike. Did he live here? Had he been looking for me, or did he just happen to run into me? Even without my dad here, it would have been difficult to get those answers from him.

Dammit.

“Come on, Dad,” I said, and grabbed his upper arm. “I think we just scared him. Let’s go. Come on.”

I tugged at him, but my dad was a brick.

“Dad, please,” I said. “He just looks freaked out.”

That looked like the truth, at least, and my dad must have recognized that.

Puck’s droopy-dog expression vanished the instant my dad turned around. He flashed me first an apologetic smile, then a grin, then a look of relief. I held up a hand to give him a covert wave, but my dad caught me and tugged me back around.

“Don’t provoke him, Lucy,” Dad said. “Just some crazy old guy.”

Dad made a point of opening the passenger door for me and tucking me in. He even guided the back of my head like a cop tossing a perp into the back of his car. The door slammed shut next to me. He slid into his seat, gunned the engine, and squealed out of the parking lot.

Puck’s eyes followed us the rest of the way, his face blank, but his eyes wide. He needed something. Or I needed something.

We disappeared around the corner. I couldn’t sneak out again, I knew—my parents were on high alert already, and I didn’t need to be sent to boarding school or something. My dad’s talk of a shrink, no matter how jovial in appearance, was dead serious. They had a problem daughter and something had to be done.